How the Subconscious Mind Creates Your Reality
- 11 hours ago
- 10 min read
Written by Sarah McAtee, Subconscious Mindset Coach
Sarah Michelle is a Subconscious Mindset Coach for High Achievers. She helps driven leaders uncover the subconscious patterns shaping their results and reprogram the beliefs keeping them from their next level of success.
The other day, I was watching the Instagram Story of a woman we’ll call Kay. Kay’s first story of the morning was filmed from her car, complaining that her day was already going poorly. Before she even finished her sentence, she yelled at another driver to “do his job.”
Hours later, she was back on stories, this time upset about her salad tasting terrible.
A previous version of me probably would have felt affected by watching her irritation. But knowing what I know now… it actually made me smile.
How many people do you know who’ve had a day like that? Better question: How many times have you?
Most people believe their experiences shape their beliefs. But what if it’s the other way around?
Let’s get into it!
What is the subconscious mind?
Before we define the subconscious mind, let’s briefly talk about the conscious mind, because this is the part of your mind you probably think is running the show.
Your conscious mind is everything you’re aware of. It’s responsible for logic, reasoning, knowledge, and intentional decision-making (like deciding to send the email, change careers, speak up in a meeting, or go to the gym). It’s also the part of your mind that distinguishes between what is real and unreal (like knowing that visualizing yourself on a beach doesn’t mean you’re actually at the beach).
For my Instagram friend Kay, her conscious mind was actively interpreting what was happening: she noticed traffic, the time, small inconveniences, and consciously concluded that her day wasn’t going well.
Now let’s talk about the subconscious mind.
The subconscious is the part of your mind that operates beneath conscious awareness. It quietly influences how you perceive, react to, and experience life all without you realizing it. It’s the part of the brain that stores beliefs, memories, emotional associations, and learned patterns.
In the same example, once the first “wrong” thing happened that morning, Kay’s subconscious belief, that any small thing going wrong would mean the day was already ruined, was activated. From there, her reactions weren’t simply conscious choices, but conscious choices influenced by subconscious beliefs running in the background.
How beliefs are formed
When I was a toddler, my mom used to call me “the Princess and the Pea.” If there was a grain of sand in my sock or a wrinkle in my clothes, I felt it, and I reacted to it.
Perfection mattered to me early on. In school, I would take forever to complete assignments because I was afraid that if something wasn’t just right, I would have to start over. Subconsciously, I began to associate imperfection with discomfort and failure.
As I got older, that belief evolved. It showed up as overthinking, hesitation, and a fear of starting anything without knowing exactly how it would turn out. When I first decided to build my business, I stalled for months, convinced I needed every detail figured out before I could begin. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was operating from a subconscious belief that imperfection wasn’t safe.
So why did an experience like this, so early in life, affect other areas of my life as I grew older? Because most of our beliefs are formed between ages 0-7, before the conscious mind is fully developed to question or challenge what’s being absorbed (We’ll come back to why this is so important later!).
When an experience carries emotional weight (like me being bothered by imperfection), the subconscious mind looks for meaning. It asks questions like, "What does this say about me?" or "What does this mean about life and what’s possible?" In my case, the repeated discomfort around imperfection led my mind to conclude that getting things wrong had consequences. When you think a thought over and over again, the subconscious eventually accepts it as truth, forming a belief.
How beliefs shape perception
The subconscious mind acts like a lens, shaping what is noticed, what is ignored, and how situations are interpreted. Most people are unknowingly responding to reality as it’s filtered through their beliefs.
You know how, when you’re excited about someone new in your life and they drive a certain car, you suddenly see that car everywhere? Like, you didn’t even know this type of car existed before, and now you can’t escape it?
That’s because your brain has a built-in filtering system called the Reticular Activating System (RAS). It’s a brainstem system responsible for regulating attention and determining which sensory information reaches conscious awareness. Its job is to decide what information gets your attention and what gets ignored.
Your beliefs act like instructions for that filter. When a belief is active, meaning it’s being subconsciously referenced, the RAS scans your environment for information that supports it and brings that evidence into your awareness. Information that aligns with the belief stands out, while information that contradicts it is often filtered out before you even notice it.
This is why you start noticing your crush’s car everywhere. Once something becomes meaningful to you, your brain starts prioritizing it, and what it flags as important is heavily influenced by your beliefs.
Now here’s another important piece: we don’t all have the same beliefs, which means we don’t all see the same reality.
Put two people in the exact same situation, a delayed flight, a tough conversation, a missed opportunity. One person’s beliefs interpret it as proof that things never work out for them. The other’s beliefs interpret it as an opportunity to create something even better.
This is how two people can walk away from the same event with totally different interpretations. Their responses aren’t based on the event itself, but on the beliefs influencing how the event is perceived. The experience may seem objective, but the filter is not.
And because perception influences interpretation, perception also influences behavior. The choices you make, the risks you take, and the opportunities you pursue are shaped by what you believe is possible, available, or safe.
When the lens changes, it changes what you notice, how you interpret it, and how you respond. Over time, that shapes the experiences you continue to have.
So, how does the subconscious actually create your reality?
At its core, it’s a chain reaction. Let’s break it down:
You have a subconscious belief. That belief creates thoughts.
Those thoughts create emotions.
Those emotions carry a vibration.
And that vibration communicates what you want more of.
Simple, right? Wink. Just kidding. I won’t leave you to interpret that on your own. Let’s say you have a belief that the only way to be successful is to hustle.
That belief pulls in matching thought patterns like: "I haven’t done enough if I want to meet my goals." "I need to be better or else I’ll fall behind." "I never have time for social events."
Those thoughts create an emotional state, anxiety, pressure, self-judgment. And when you move through life from that emotional state, it shapes how you show up and therefore what you attract.
You say yes when you’re already stretched thin because part of you believes your value is tied to being needed.
You take on more than you need to, because slowing down feels undeserved.
You interpret feedback as a sign to improve because you equate growth with fixing yourself.
You assume effort is always required because you’ve learned that success comes from doing, not receiving.
It feels productive and even looks admirable from the outside. But internally, it reinforces the belief that success only comes through force.
Over time, the world begins to mirror that pattern back to you. You find yourself in roles where more is expected of you. You attract dynamics where you carry more responsibility. You recreate environments that require 110% of you.
The belief isn’t just sitting in your mind, it’s shaping your reality. Belief to thought to emotion to vibration to experience.
Change the belief, and you change the vibration. Change the vibration, and you change your reality.
Updating subconscious programming
If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably wondering, “Okay… cool theory. But how do I actually change this?”
While there are many ways to approach shifting the subconscious, the following is the framework I personally use with my clients and one I’ve seen create real, lasting change.
The first step is to reveal
You can’t change what you can’t see. Start by becoming aware of your thoughts. Not the filtered, polished ones, but the repetitive ones. The automatic ones. The intrusive ones. Your thoughts are clues that point to the deeper beliefs running quietly in the background. Spend some time writing down the most common thoughts you think throughout a single day. Patterns will start to emerge, and those patterns reveal the overarching beliefs shaping your experience.
For example, you might notice thoughts like:
“I can’t afford to slow down right now.”
“Now is not the time to rest.”
“I just need to stay consistent.”
“If I stop posting, the algorithm will forget me.”
“If I take a break, clients will lose interest.”
Notice how none of these sound unreasonable. If anything, they sound responsible, driven, and capable. But when you zoom out, a belief emerges: “If I slow down, I might find out that I’m not enough as is.”
Damn. You just revealed something that has had power over you for the last 20+ years. But guess what? Now, you get to challenge the belief.
Remember earlier when I mentioned that most of our beliefs were formed between ages 0-7, before we had the ability to question what we were absorbing? Yeah, you’re not seven anymore. Now you get to pause and ask: Is this actually true? Or is this just a belief I absorbed and never revisited?
Many of the beliefs running your life were never consciously chosen; they were simply accepted. But by revealing the underlying belief, you take back the power to decide whether it still gets to shape your reality.
The second step is to release
Once you’ve identified a limiting belief, the next step is to release it. I personally use a breathwork technique called Subconscious Release Technique with my clients, but there are other ways of releasing. The key is to thin the veil between your conscious and subconscious mind, meaning we create enough space between you and the belief that it no longer is fused to your identity, releasing control over you.
For example, there is an aspect of the Subconscious Release Technique where my clients hold their breath. Why? Because when you hold your breath, your mind temporarily stops cycling through the same thought loops and is just focused on one thing: getting air to the body and brain. Do you see how this interrupts the loop and creates separation from the belief? You’ll know you have released it, or at least loosened its grip, when the body feels lighter and the belief no longer feels like the truth.
The third step is to replace
Now you intentionally replace it with a new belief you want to install into your subconscious instead. I like to pick beliefs that are aligned with where you want to go and what you want to create in your life. So in this case, you would change the belief to something like “Slowing down progresses me,” or “Even in stillness, I am enough,” or “Rest reveals clarity.”
Here’s what that would look like in real life:
Instead of answering emails at 10pm to prove you’re committed, you close your laptop and trust that your work speaks for itself.
Instead of squeezing five more tasks into your day, you leave more space on your calendar and notice your best ideas show up there.
Instead of measuring your worth by output, you practice being fully enough by sitting in the stillness.
The final step is to reinforce
Just replacing the belief doesn’t create believability. The key part of this step is finding evidence that the new belief is true. I explain this to my clients like a table: The top of the table is a belief, and the legs of the table are the evidence supporting the belief. The more legs (evidence) you have, the deeper the belief. Over time, this reinforces the belief and shows you that it is true, even when other possibilities and outcomes exist.
Using the tabletop analogy, the top of the table would be “Rest reveals clarity.” And the legs would be, “Your best ideas come in the shower.” “That one time you came back from Hawaii and had a whole new idea you couldn't wait to implement.” “Taking a day off always increases your productivity the next day,” etc. See how finding the evidence of truth strengthens the new belief?
It’s important to note that subconscious programming changes through repetition because it’s intentionally creating new mental habits. The more often you think the same aligned thoughts, the stronger the belief becomes. And over time, those beliefs form your subconscious programming.
If you decide to explore this work on your own, I genuinely believe you can. The fact that you’re even thinking about your subconscious patterns already tells me you’re self-aware, and that matters more than you realize! But I also won’t sugarcoat it: This work stretches you. Challenging beliefs you’ve carried for 20+ years can feel super uncomfortable. For me, the reveal and release steps were the hardest… because when you’re in it, you’re in it. You’ve built logic around it. You’ve defended it. You’ve identified with it. You’ve probably succeeded because of it. So questioning it feels… threatening.
What changed everything for me was having someone reflect back what I couldn’t see on my own. Having another set of eyes on my patterns was powerful. It created clarity faster than I could access by myself, and that’s why I care so deeply about guiding others through this work now. If you’re ready to update the beliefs shaping your results and unlock your next level, I’d love to support you in that. Below, you’ll find all my information.
However you choose to approach it, I encourage you to lean into it. Understanding how the subconscious mind works gives you something most people never realize they have: the ability to create your reality with your mind instead of against it.
Read more from Sarah McAtee
Sarah McAtee, Subconscious Mindset Coach
Sarah Michelle is a Subconscious Mindset Coach for High Achievers who know they’re capable of more but feel stuck despite their ambition. She works with executives, founders, and entrepreneurs to uncover and upgrade the subconscious beliefs creating internal resistance and limiting their expansion. Through deep subconscious work, she helps clients cultivate clarity, confidence, and aligned momentum. Her approach is rooted in the understanding that lasting change happens by transforming what’s running beneath conscious awareness.
